Social networking through the internet has exploded of late due to the internet's inherent ability to permit communication among users. Various standard protocols have allowed for information and resource exchange through email, bulletin boards, chat rooms, and the like, for many years, however, more recent advances in mobile technology now permit people to exchange information via their mobile phones and tablets that heretofore could take place only while sitting at a desktop, laptop, or notebook computer.
Web-based networking now exists in the form of such sites as MySpace®, Facebook®, LinkedIn®, Twitter®, Pinterest®, Instagram®, and many others. In such networking sites, users generally join, provide such details as contact information, and optionally include information related to a variety of interests. The sites maintain all information of all users in central servers operably connected to databases, such that users can find each other, establish links to each other, and establish communities of users.
Some social networking sites provide the ability to search for friends, i.e., other users which may already be known to a particular user, or other users who share some commonality in education, employment, or other fields of interest. Users may interact with such friends by posting information to each other's pages maintained on the site, by joining in community interactions such as those provided by applications on sites such as Facebook® or through direct message services and email clients such as those offered by both Facebook and Twitter.
Some online services offer forums for communication between communities of users or in a one to many broadcast format. These services include message boards, email lists, chat rooms, personal home pages, web logs or blogs and tweets. See, for example, U.S. Pat. Nos. 6,366,962 and 6,363,427. These services provide a forum where profiles or messages are viewed by a specific individual, the general public, or the entire membership of a specific defined group.
These types of forums allow visibility to multiple members of a group; however, they typically are not based on events or social networks, but rather on broader interests, such as a particular hobby or sport.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,519,629 discloses, among other things, a system designed to distribute, initiate and allow interaction and communication within like-minded communities of users.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,618,593 discloses a system designed to “match” users using their mobile phones, which may use location and other information to determine such matching.
U.S. Pat. No. 7,047,202 discloses, among other things, a method and apparatus for users to search networks, both their own network and their peers' networks, all under the umbrella of what the inventors therein call a “multiple level access” security system.
U.S. Pat. No. 7,069,308 discloses, among other things, a networking system wherein descriptive data and relationship data are integrated and processed to reveal a series of social relationships connecting any two users within a social network.
U.S. Pat. No. 7,305,233 discloses, among other things, a system wherein images are uploaded to a central server, which system permits printing and delivery of such images.
US Patent Application Publication No. 2002/0065741 discloses, among other things, a system wherein images selected by a user may be uploaded, and cards with selected images may be distributed to selected recipients.
In the general field of sports, for example, there are many websites of general interest, such as news organizations, and there are those dedicated to the field, which provide a variety of information, such as scores, text descriptions, video clips, photos of games, etc. There are also sites which provide users with games, such as fantasy football, hosted by the site and existing only in cyberspace. Information on local events may be found on the websites for local municipalities, news organizations, sports leagues, etc.
Notwithstanding the myriad sites available for accessing information, none to date provide the ability for users to share media obtained at a sporting event, in real time, such that all users participating in a live event, and those who only take interest at some later time, have access to the combined media from all participants in a customizable manner. The advent of mobile devices capable of reaching the internet, GPS, and audiovisual recording has made it possible to record information at an event and have it be uploaded to a server in essentially real-time. The newest mobile devices, such as the iPhone®, Android®, and Blackberry®, are particularly suitable for the purposes of the present invention because they are capable of having applications installed which directly interface with the website servers contemplated by the invention.
No existing methods take advantage of this ability to provide all similarly situated users a shared, continuously updated community view of an event. Nor do they provide the ability to create hard-copy records and images of such events including images originally captured by other users, obtainable merely by ordering same, whether during the event, immediately thereafter, or any time after the event has completed. Nor do they provide an ability to offer or suggest products or advertising to these same users which is relevant and related to a particular event. The art is in need of such systems and event-based networking tools.